R600 is expected to be launched at the end of the year and will then be the first DX10-capable graphics circuit on the market sporting a Unified Shader architecture. This very interesting circuit from ATI will require loads of transistors and the fewer transistors needed, the less space and money is needed. Now it seems that ATI will have to do with a 80nm manufacturing process when making R600, 65nm which the TSMC plant have started preparing doesn’t seem reliable enough to be used with such a complex circuit as R600 before the end of the year. We should therefore expect ATI to rely on its 80nm technology, which will still result in a 17% smaller core than an equivalent circuit at 90nm, the technology used by ATI today.
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